Such pulse generators or transmitters basically embody SCR-controlled capacitor charging and displaying circuits driving square-loop saturable magnetic reactor pulse compression circuits comprising series-resonant circuits feeding an output RF transformer for energizing an antenna load to radiate RF pulses at the desired output frequency to which the series resonant circuit is tuned—100 kHz for a Loran-C transmitter.
Prior to the discovery of the present invention, the peak output power that could be so generated was limited, as later more fully explained, by the minority carrier charges stored in the solid-state junction of the pulse compression circuit high-power diode connected in series with the saturable reactor, being dissipated by the rapid build-up of reverse current as the reactor saturates. Heretofore, the possible peak output power was limited by the minority carriers in the high power diode and not by the actual power ratings of the capacitors and other circuit components, which were thus under-used in such pulse generators.
In accordance with the present invention, this limitation of high-power pulse output has been totally overcome and the full power ratings of the circuit components now made available for use, by the insertion of a novel type of minority carrier sweep-out circuits for the pulse compression circuit diode, and in a novel shunt position in the pulse compression circuit.
While the broad concept of minority carrier sweep-out networks for priming-loss reduction and for eliminating dissipated minority carrier sweep-out losses in the SCR junctions of SCR-controlled energy switching circuits has been used for many years by said assignee and others, as described in my prior U.S. Pat. No. 4,230,955 (and also in U.S. Pat. No. 4,674,022), the discovery has now been made that a novel configuration sweep-out circuit is possible for the minority carriers developed in the series solid-state diode itself of a pulse compression circuit, and that such use may now enable the employment of the full actual voltage and power ratings of the pulse generator circuit components, allowing substantially increased peak output power to be generated by the same transmitter.